Method to Provide a Measure of Link Reliability to a Routing Protocol in an Ad Hoc Wireless Network

2. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein: the predicted value is based on at least one of signal strength and signal-to-noise ratio.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein: the traffic conditions include idle, light traffic, moderate traffic or heavy traffic.

4. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein: the source and destination nodes are mobile nodes.

5. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein: the most preferable link qualities include a measure of probability of a packet being successfully received by the destination node.

6. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the traffic conditions being experienced are determined by calculating the inter-arrival time between each packet transmission.

8. A node as claimed in claim 7 , wherein: the predicted value is based on at least one of signal strength and signal-to-noise ratio.

9. A node as claimed in claim 7 , wherein: the traffic conditions include idle, light traffic, moderate traffic or heavy traffic.

10. A node as claimed in claim 7 , wherein: the source and destination nodes are mobile nodes.

11. A node as claimed in claim 7 , wherein: the most preferable link qualities include a measure of probability of a packet being successfully received by the destination node.

12. A node as claimed in claim 7 , wherein the traffic conditions being experienced are determined by calculating the inter-arrival time between each packet transmission.